


Burn Spots & Bookmarks

by Manon



Category: Death Note
Genre: Gen, Gen Fic, Introspection, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-12
Updated: 2012-03-12
Packaged: 2017-11-01 20:38:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manon/pseuds/Manon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there is a sliver of time left in Matt's world, a pocket of the past that he could climb inside and take shelter in, then he sure as hell wants to know about it. T, Matt-centric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn Spots & Bookmarks

_My old clock used to tell the time,_

_and subdivide diurnity._

_But now it's lost both hands and chime,_

_and only tells eternity._

*

If there is a sliver of time left in Matt's world, a pocket of the past that he could climb inside and take shelter in, then he sure as hell wants to know about it.

Matt's a realist, which is to say that he doesn't believe in escapist fantasies or prophetic dreams about the future, or wormholes to the past for that matter. But it's a nice thought anyway, the idea that he could revert to his childhood simply by closing his eyes and trusting in sleep and the dreams that follow; to not have to think about the mess he's gotten himself into. And yet, the bigger, more skeptical part of himself scoffs at the idea. This is no dream and, deep down in his bones, he knows that. It would be nice to think about it being that way at least, but everything around him refutes the thought, irrevocably and without hesitation. Each time he lights a cigarette and manages to burn the tips of his fingers, or takes a bite of stale cereal and bites his tongue, or stares at a computer screen too hard for too long and his eyes start to blur, reality pokes him in the side.

It would be a nice idea; but few things are nice in Matt's world right now and the least of his worries are what could be, instead of what is. Fact: his mentor, the person he idolized all throughout his misbegotten, still existing youth, is dead and the person who did it is still free. Fact: his best friend, a boy he's known for the whole of nine years, eight months, and twenty-six days is a volatile ticking time-bomb who would just as soon punch his nose in as save his life. Fact: he sleeps on a cold, hard bed made up of tangled sheets thrown onto the softest bit of floor he can find and with a pillow punched into shape by night after night of continual use. Fact: he has exactly twenty-one cigarettes left on his person and when he runs out, he doesn't know what he'll do, because withdrawal is swift and merciless when you're young.

Fact: he's going to die soon, nineteen years of age, with smooth, thin cheeks and unwashed red hair and eyes that are much too full of the past for the face they're set in, and no one is going to be there for it.

He can't really say how he knows this, or if he even  _does_ know it at all. Maybe it's just a thought he had on another sleepless night, when he sat before the bluish glow of a computer screen while he waited three consecutive hours for Mello to return. Maybe it was something he dreamt on one of those rare occasions when he actually  _did_ get some sleep. And maybe it's just a gut feeling, something to do with spying on a mediocre Japanese task force day in and day out, with sleeping on a hard slab of floor each night and with chewing on his fingernails until they bleed and with smoking cigarette after cigarette like they're jellybeans. But somehow, he knows. His life is ending and that's all.

And yet, in spite of all this certainty, Matt's thoughts don't turn inward as they ought to. Instead, he thinks about Mello, the only other person who is really and truly a part of his life right now and who, he is sure, will be the only one he has left to talk to until he dies. That alone is a frightening thought; Mello doesn't  _talk_  to people and he's even worse at listening but, then again, Matt doesn't have much to say. He just wants to be somewhere near him is all, really, because Mello is the person he's known the longest and the person he likes the best, even when he is snapping at Matt and aiming punches at his face and utterly walking out of his life to go take over the American mafia or something.

But Mello is, among other things, Matt's connection to reality, and his tunnel to the past. Matt's not a social creature, to say the least; video games and a life spent on television always seemed so much more engaging than having to talk with people, having to listen and nod his head and pretend to care. And growing up with someone like Mello teaches you things about the art of communication that most people never dream of, like how a door slam can mean so much more than the most eloquent of soliloquies. Besides, they have a nice balance with each other, one that, no matter how volatile Mello is feeling, never fails to calm Matt's nerves in a way that all the nicotine in the world can't. It's just that, Mello isn't  _with_  him anymore, not really. He leaves as often as he comes in, and their periods of communication have grown short and concise. It's not really anyone's fault, but it doesn't change the fact that he's alone for much of the day and there's nothing to distract him from the anxiety pumping through his veins but rows and rows of computer screens, all telling him things about his observational targets that he really doesn't care to know anymore.

Matt's on, most of the time; his hands move automatically to his cell phone the minute he sees Mogi and that girl, Misa, doing something that might count as suspicious, and his mouth moves of its own accord in telling Mello about it, but in his head, he is far away. When he looks at Misa, he sees instead Linda, who was always small and slight and pretty, even if Mello didn't want to admit it. Video games have lost their engaging power over him, mostly because he's beaten them a million times and could probably go through the games blindfolded if he wanted to. And so he fills the gaps between Mello's returns and departures with thoughts and, inevitably, those thoughts all lead him toward the past. The future is too bright to think about anyway.

Matt can't pinpoint the day it began, this dreary downward spiral into his own memories, but now that he's reached it, he feels caught in them, as though all the bits and pieces of his past are sticky cobwebs that he can't shake off. Over the past few days, he's found himself daydreaming about all sorts of things: A game of kickball that happened at Wammy's a hundred years ago, the day he bugged Roger's office and found out, all on his own so that he knew two days before everyone else, that L was coming to pay them a visit, the day that Mello punched him in the mouth for something that he still swears he didn't do. All these little memories, these fragments of a greater puzzle that make up his life, everything he's ever done or will do, and all Matt can think of is what a fucking shame it is he can't crawl back into that past sometime.

It's different when he's with Mello. When he's  _with_  him, listening to the information he has on Takada or the second L's next movement or the things that they still need to do to ensure that their plan actually works, then Matt doesn't think of the past at all. He focuses instead on the scar marring his best friend's face, the hard, ovaline shape of his eyes, the flatline twist to his mouth. He doesn't remember any of these things existing years ago, at Wammy's although he never thinks of it at the time. Later, sometime at night, when he's kicked off the tangled sheets and sits in front of the computer once again, eyes boring into the text on the screen, he remembers Mello's face when they were thirteen and something inside him twists.

And he knows, deeply, intuitively, without even having to think it, that that Mello is gone and no matter what Matt says or does or wishes, he can't bring him back.

So Matt sleeps, sometimes and eats, occasionally, and listens, constantly, and thinks about the days when Mello wore soft black cotton shirts instead of leather and his hands held books and rubber balls for foursquare instead of the hard metal handle of a gun, and he dreams about the past.

Sometimes, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Quote is Piet Hein.  
> Thanks for reading. Any and all feedback is extremely welcome.


End file.
